Especially in the 1980s, excellent paintings were created behind the drawn curtain of the normalisation art scene, saturated with existential presence, colourful and generous painterly gesture, and a desire to explore the possibilities of the painting, which almost no one saw at that time or afterwards. This is also the origin of the exhibition’s title, which in this sense could be a discovery both for Slovak and Czech audiences.
The communist regime darkened the minds and souls of most inhabitants of normalisation Czechoslovakia, artists included. This particularly affected those who entered the art scene in the post-invasion 1970s, including our group of four exhibiting painters.
The 1980s brought gradual relaxation, euphoric in the latter half, expressed in a great deal of artistic activity, large formats, striking colours, simply bursting energy, yet nevertheless, a “mistake”! The energy of this lost generation occasionally pierced exhibition daylight only sporadically in these years. Previously, exhibitions were banned or taken down, a fate shared by Václav Benda and Rostislav Novák alike.
And at the moment when the space for freedom fully opened, again a “mistake”! Art erupted like the furious volcano Vesuvius with a postmodern eruption, and the lava of new art overshadowed the introverted and existentially contemplative generation of artists. This generation did not thereafter rise to new heights exhibition-wise. This particularly applies to Václav Benda and Rostislav Novák, hermits outside the main cultural centres.
